Research
Research
Current Studies
Our ongoing projects examine how chronic and complex trauma shape affective processing, physiological regulation, and embodied experience. These studies integrate behavioral tasks, psychophysiological measurement, and neuroimaging to clarify the mechanisms through which trauma alters emotional and cognitive systems.
Blunted and Discordant Affect Syndrome (BADA)
The Blunted and Discordant Affect Syndrome (BADA) project investigates a pattern of reduced, delayed, or mismatched emotional responding observed in individuals with complex trauma histories. We assess pan-diagnostic, multiply symptomatic participants stratified by abuse history and diagnosis, comparing them to healthy controls.
Across conventional cognitive tasks and more ecologically valid paradigms, we examine whether there are reliable affective, physiological, and neuroimaging signatures of blunted and discordant affect. Our goal is to characterize the time course and neural mechanisms underlying this syndrome.
We are particularly interested in mechanistic constructs described in the literature, including:
• “Shutting down,” marked by decreased neural and physiological responsivity
• Avoidance, reflecting active disengagement from emotional stimuli
• Delayed reactions, including lagged behavioral and neurophysiological responses
• Eventual “blow-ups” following cumulative stimuli
• Failure to integrate sensory input with higher-order cortical processing
By identifying convergent behavioral, autonomic, and neural markers, this study aims to clarify how complex trauma reshapes emotional processing in ways that are qualitatively distinct from acute trauma.
Physiological Signature of Trauma
(“Big Physio”)
This large-scale project seeks to identify a physiological “signature” of complex trauma. Individuals with histories of chronic trauma often exhibit unusual or unexpected autonomic responses to everyday stimuli. We aim to characterize these patterns systematically.
Participants complete comprehensive symptom assessments and then engage in attentional and cognitive tasks while we measure autonomic nervous system activity, including heart rate, skin conductance, and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA).
By mapping patterns of physiological reactivity across tasks, we aim to distinguish trauma-related regulation profiles and build more inclusive research paradigms. This work has implications for both clinical assessment and the development of trauma-informed interventions.
Interoception and Embodied Self-Processing
Interoception refers to the capacity to sense and interpret internal bodily states, contributing to emotion regulation and a coherent sense of self. Trauma exposure may disrupt these processes, potentially altering how individuals experience body ownership and self-identity.
In this line of research, we examine interoceptive abilities using behavioral paradigms such as heartbeat detection and timing-based tapping tasks. We test the hypothesis that chronic trauma may attenuate or distort interoceptive accuracy, reflecting defensive adaptations or compensatory mechanisms.
By integrating interoception research with trauma science, we seek to clarify how disruptions in embodied awareness contribute to emotion dysregulation and self-processing difficulties.